Primavera otoño 2020 (Año LXIII Núms. 122-123)

horizontes@pucpr.edu Año LXIV Núm. 124-125 horizontes PRIMAVERA / OTOÑO 2021 PUCPR 46 The review article shows how different researchers related deep breathing to cognitive control, autonomic nervous system and how these correlated with emotions. Future research could investigate how the deep- breathing technique could help control the emotion of fear. Researchers have already conducted studies where they established that emotional stimuli elicited spontaneous reactions from the autonomic nervous system, which affected physiological signals such as heart rate, respiratory rate, blood pressure, skin conductance, and body temperature (Jang et al., 2020). Fear was a withdrawal-related emotion with high arousal and negative valence elicited by a threatening event Fear activated the autonomic nervous system in a possible fight-or- flight response. Jang et al. (2020) compared multimodal physiological responses, including skin conductance level, skin conductance response, heart rate, respiratory rate, fingertip temperature, pulse transit time, induced by- fear-inducing and neutral film clips. As the fear intensity increased, α-adrenergic vascular changes and vasoconstriction increased. Memory extinction reduced conditional response over time. However, researchers indicated that extinction did not erase fear memories; instead, extinction generated a competing inhibitory memory trace to coexist with a fear memory trace. Scharfenort et al. (2016) suggested that an adversity experience may become embedded in the brain. The experience may manifest in behavioral and neural measures to differentiate safe from dangerous signals during the adversity-induced return of fear. Recent exposure to adversity may promote fear response. This exposure could happen during 24-h-delayed fear-recall and reinstatement of induced return-of-fear, possibly through fear-memory-consolidation. Conclusion This review article has discussed the latest three crucial concepts that relate to each other. These three concepts included the autonomic activation of cognitive control, autonomic nervous system, and deep breathing. For future investigations, deep breathing techniques may aid other disorders such as fear, phobias, traumatic events, anxiety, stress, and depression. Table 1 Cognitive Control Autonomic nervous system Deep Breathing Heritable, involved emotional regulation. Bidirectional emotion and cognitive control. Manage heartbeat and breathing. Emotional stimuli elicit reactions. Control different emotions and pain. Activates parasympathetic nervous system. Modulate brain functions. Treatment for anxiety and bipolar disorder. Acknowledgments I want to acknowledge the original concept by my mentor, Dra. Marisol Camacho Santiago and editing this manuscript by Dr. Dallas E. Alston, professor in the Department of Natural Sciences, PCUPR.